


a reflection on being honest, being awake, & being in love

by eurydicees



Series: the secret languages between kings [1]
Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Bisexual Suoh Tamaki, Character Study, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Gay Ootori Kyouya, Getting Together, Language, Language Barrier, M/M, Pre-Canon, disclaimer: i don't actually know french, mixed race character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28123653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurydicees/pseuds/eurydicees
Summary: Tamaki moves to Japan and loses everything. Kyoya learns how to speak French, and then how to dream. Somewhere along the way, an unspoken thing becomes spoken.
Relationships: Ootori Kyouya/Suoh Tamaki
Series: the secret languages between kings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060352
Comments: 13
Kudos: 87





	a reflection on being honest, being awake, & being in love

###### 1: on promises spoken in other languages

“You know, Kyoya,” Tamaki says, not looking over to where Kyoya is lying next to him. 

They’re in a hotel in Okinawa, aligned next to each other on a bed so that Tamaki’s head is by Kyoya’s feet and Kyoya’s head is by Tamaki’s feet, the two of them staring up at the ceiling. They’re slowly covering part of Tamaki’s list of things to do while he’s in Japan. Tamaki still says “while” as if it hasn’t sunk in that he’s going to be here until the end of high school at the minimum, but Kyoya isn’t going to point that out. He’s just going to take Tamaki where he needs to go and move on with his life when he can. 

“If you think about it,” Tamaki continues, “a Heian period theme is actually a really good idea…” 

“Sure,” Kyoya agrees, not really sure what he’s agreeing to. He just nods along, finally tuning back in a minute or so later, realizing that Tamaki is making even less sense than usual. It takes a moment to figure out why there are sounds and word orders that he can’t quite decipher, and then he nudges Tamaki’s head with his foot. “Tamaki. I don’t know French.” 

Tamaki stops. Blinks. Kyoya goes back the last few minutes, trying to remember what Tamaki had been saying, and when he missed a word and didn’t recover. “Heian period… pretty fabric… the Hitachiin twins’ mother— what’s the word? You know, Kyoya? With the— the— she can, uh— _peut coudre—_ Kyoya, _mon chérie, vous connaissez…”_

He had stopped there, Kyoya’s foot finding his cheek and shoving gently. 

“I don’t know the word,” Tamaki sighs, pushing Kyoya away and closing his eyes. “I don’t know the right word.” 

Kyoya closes his eyes too. He’s tired, and Tamaki is tired, and this feels like a good place to stop the conversation. Not knowing words makes having a conversation difficult— that’s a problem, Kyoya has found, with a lot of his conversations with Tamaki. He mentioned it once to Fuyumi and never since— even Kyoya isn't enough of an asshole to make fun of Tamaki’s less-than-perfect speech. 

“I miss French,” Tamaki murmurs, so soft that Kyoya almost doesn’t catch it. It’s strange to hear something so quiet coming from Tamaki, but in a way, it’s also fitting. The sun outside is sinking, the room getting slowly darker. “It’s a beautiful language, you know. And it makes _sense.”_

“Japanese makes sense,” Kyoya says, but it’s more to defend his native language than it is to argue, or to actually have a point. It feels like that’s what most of his comments are to Tamaki— to talk, rather than to make a point. To share rather than argue. It’s strange.

Tamaki licks his lips, and Kyoya studies him carefully, trying to figure out what he’s thinking. But Tamaki is the most unpredictable person that Kyoya has ever met, and he can’t get a pin on who he is. Maybe that’s why Kyoya got only one room, rather than two, so that he can figure out who Tamaki Suoh is when he’s alone. Kyoya tells himself that it’s with that morbid curiosity, and not a gentle craving to be alone with him. 

“Do you talk in French with anyone anymore?” Kyoya asks. 

Tamaki hesitates, then he exhales loudly, stomach sinking and rising again. “No. I wish I could.” 

Kyoya takes a similarly deep breath. This is new territory; it’s been awhile since Tamaki declared them best friends, and he’s shared stories from France, but this is different. This is an admission that Kyoya doesn’t really know what to do with— he’s been able to hold up to all of Tamaki’s other wishes, but Kyoya can’t begin to understand this one. He doesn’t speak any other languages, besides the passable English he’s learned in school. He’s never lived in a foreign country, and he’s never been anything but Japanese. 

Tamaki, on the other hand, is a mash of two cultures with different scripts for language and cultural interactions. Kyoya is well aware of that. It was one of the first things he learned about the Suoh boy. Born out of wedlock to a French mother, who grew sick, who sent him to live with his father. 

Kyoya doesn’t particularly care about any of that— if he could still be the Suoh heir despite it all, Kyoya would make his connections just the same— but it matters to Tamaki. Listening to him now, that’s something Kyoya can see clearly. 

“I’m sure that there’s someone who would talk to you,” Kyoya finally says, in lieu of anything that means something. He’s never been good at the emotions part of conversations. He sticks with small talk, with business, with charm. Not with confessionals. 

“Maybe,” Tamaki says. “It’s just hard to find people. It’s not like anyone in school wants to. French isn’t offered as a subject. Even if they had a choice, people would still choose to learn English. It’s more useful.” 

Kyoya closes his eyes for a long moment. He doesn’t really want to have this conversation. But then again— he finds himself listening to Tamaki closely, devouring his every word, soaking up what he asks for and trying to provide it. He can’t explain why he does it, but he knows that he’s doing it anyways. 

“It’s my home language,” Tamaki murmurs. He sighs again. It’s that kind of night. “It’s just sad that I can’t share it with anyone.” 

Kyoya hasn’t yet known Tamaki to worry about anything important, except perhaps his mother. Tamaki is a passionate person, not an anxious one. Kyoya doesn’t know how to handle a sad Tamaki— but here he is. On a bed in a hotel room in Okinawa, wanting nothing more than to help him. It’s a first for Kyoya, wanting to help someone just because they’re sad. But Tamaki has been giving Kyoya a lot of firsts lately, and Kyoya has stopped fighting it. 

“I could learn French,” he blurts out, not really knowing what he’s saying before he says it. Then he hears himself, and internally curses ever betraying cell in his tongue. 

There’s a moment of silence, and then Tamaki sits up, leaning back on his elbows and looking at Kyoya with an intensity in his eyes that Kyoya recognizes— it’s the same glint in his eye as when Tamaki came up with the host club idea, the same glint in his eye as when Kyoya pushed him over and demanded to know the secret to his carefree world. 

“You would do that?” 

Kyoya sits up too, meeting his gaze. He’s never been one to back down from a challenge, and Tamaki Suoh is a challenge in and of itself. If making Tamaki happy is a game, Kyoya is going to win. “Yeah.” 

“Kyoya,” Tamaki says, a grin spreading over his face. “Fuck, Kyoya, that’d be amazing— oh, I can teach you— and it’ll be…” 

That’s when Kyoya lies down and starts to zone out again. Silently, he begins crafting lesson plans in his head, a new organizational system in his notebooks tailored specifically for language learning, a research plan into the history of the French language, that’ll help, right? And he’ll have to get some dictionaries… 

“We should start now!” Tamaki says, grinning. He’s fully sitting up now, practically bouncing on the bed. Something about the way that Tamaki is smiling, about the way that he’s looking at Kyoya, makes Kyoya want to sit up and grin in the same way. “Oh, we should start with—” 

“Something simple,” Kyoya interrupts. “We’re starting with something simple.” 

Tamaki nods seriously. “Of course. We’ll start easy. Uh, _un, deux, trois.”_

“Good,” Kyoya says, the corner of his mouth tipping up. 

They stare at each other for the moment, something turning over in Kyoya’s stomach, and then Tamaki bursts out laughing. He tackles Kyoya into a hug that nearly throws them both off of the bed. He’s laughing, and fuck, if that doesn’t make Kyoya laugh too. It’s a rare thing for Kyoya to drop his composure like this, but Tamaki is almost always the reason. It’s strange to think about it, but Tamaki is maybe the only person who has heard Kyoya’s real laugh, the one who gets when he loses control and gives into excitement, into the near contagious spell of Tamaki’s energy. 

“We can speak in French together,” Tamaki says, still smiling. 

He’s lifted himself out of the bear hug, now straddling Kyoya and sitting in his lap. His weight holds Kyoya down, keeping him from sitting up, and Kyoya feels something hot in his lungs— a good feeling, but not a welcome one. Kyoya doesn’t know how to stop it from happening, but his heart blooms when Tamaki smiles, and Tamaki’s touch makes him burn. While some deep, self-analytic part of him thinks it knows what it means, a larger part of him pushes those words away. 

“Thank you,” Tamaki says. His hands take Kyoya’s hands, his skin a burning sun. “Thank you, _mon chéri.”_

“Of course,” Kyoya says. And then, just because he doesn’t know anything else, “Bonjour.” 

Tamaki laughs again, bright and brilliant, and that something stirs in Kyoya’s chest, and he makes the choice to ignore it. Instead, he makes the choice to watch Tamaki smile and say, “That’s a start.”

###### 2: on this side of being awake

Before Kyoya has even had his coffee on the first day of winter break, Tamaki is at the Ootori estate with a backpack full of children’s books in French, knocking on the door. Kyoya half wants to yell at him to go away, but he made a commitment, and he can’t back out now. Not when Tamaki is looking so excited like that, eyes wide and face red from the cold. 

They decide that Kyoya is “going to do it the exact same way I did,” in Tamaki’s words, which apparently means that he’s going to consume endless media in French with Japanese captions while teaching himself to write via textbooks. 

Japanese isn’t a language taught in schools in France, so Tamaki learned from the videotapes and books his father sent him, all paired with workbooks ordered from Japan and a dedication that Kyoya wouldn’t ever have expected from Tamaki. The first thing that Kyoya learns during these first lessons is that, once Tamaki has his mind set on something, it’s going to happen. 

He doesn’t think that he’s ever really appreciated how smart Tamaki is until Kyoya begins trying to do what Tamaki had done— _is_ doing. Tamaki is still in Japanese language classes, trying to catch up to his peers. Kyoya never considered, before this, how hard it must be to just walk into a room of people who are all speaking a language you don’t understand and who are all judging you based on your ability to speak back to them. Knowing that Tamaki does this every day kind of… changes everything. 

He doesn’t mention it to Tamaki or say how impressed he is, but he thinks it. When Tamaki talks in French, it’s with twice the speed as he does in Japanese. It’s with a calmness in his eyes that he doesn’t get during presentations in class. It’s with a gentle confidence that doesn’t have to be screamed in order to be heard. It’s with a thousand things that Kyoya doesn’t think he’ll ever muster up in French but that he knows he has in Japanese. 

The ten days of winter break go by too fast, and Kyoya doesn’t think he’s made any progress at all. But Tamaki praises him anyways— in French— and when he laughs, that’s its own language. 

Languages, Kyoya decides, are impossible, beautiful things. Tamaki, as he smiles, is an impossible, beautiful thing. 

That’s not a train of thought that Kyoya can afford to go down, not while trying to learn direct and indirect pronouns and not while being an Ootori son, but it’s one that his mind starts to go down anyways. It’s not something he wants to do, but when Tamaki smiles— that fucking _smile_ — and Kyoya runs. He runs down those train tracks and loses himself to the thought of Tamaki. 

He loses himself to the thought of that smile and the endless patience he has when it comes to Kyoya’s French and the laughter when they find jokes that can cross between languages and the softness Tamaki gets when he plays piano at the end of a long study session and the— 

Kyoya could go on forever. He can’t bring himself to think it, and he knows that he can never say it out loud. But he also knows what it means when his gut twists at Tamaki’s laughter. He knows what it means when his heart burns as Tamaki looks at him. He knows what it means when he dreams of Tamaki and France and pulsing hearts at night. 

Sometimes he thinks back to that hotel in Okinawa, and how Tamaki had laid there, staring at the ceiling, quiet, searching for French words that don't exist in Japanese. He had laid there, next to Kyoya, and bared his soul for Kyoya to see, to take, to know. These French lessons are as much of a gift as Tamaki’s heart. 

The thing about Tamaki is that he _loves._ He has a love too big for his body, one that grows and spreads and fills Kyoya with colors that he’s never seen before. Tamaki has a love too loud for his tongue, one that slips between languages and accents and turns him into different people as he pleases. He has a love too bright for his eyes, one that bleeds into Kyoya’s life and colors every dark, broken place that had been there before. He has an infinity of love to give, and Kyoya takes it with a greed he didn’t know he had. 

Kyoya has no idea how to return that love. He has no idea how to thank Tamaki for bringing these ridiculous colors into his home. He has no idea how to say, _yes, I love you, with a vastness that I cannot control._

This kind of love from Kyoya is a privilege that very few people have, and while Kyoya can’t afford to give it to Tamaki, he does so anyways. He gives it in every way that he knows how: it’s with little gifts that remind him of Tamaki; it’s with learning French; it’s with sitting through rambling nonsense and genuinely listening; it’s with the casual, relaxed smile that only Tamaki gets to see. 

Kyoya gives the kind of love he cannot hope to receive back. He gives Tamaki the love he has never given anyone else, a stupidly romantic kind of love, and hopes that Tamaki doesn’t notice how special he is to Kyoya. 

It’s a strange thing, to be in love. Kyoya doesn’t think that he’s ever experienced it like this before. There was a boy, back in elementary school, but Kyoya passed it off as nothing more than wanting to be friends. With Tamaki, there’s no denying the way his heart jumps when they’re near each other. There’s no denying the way Tamaki’s touch leaves sparks against Kyoya’s skin. Young love, hopeless. 

At the same time, though, Tamaki doesn’t make sparks fly. He doesn’t make Kyoya collapse with affection, doesn’t seduce him until he’s a weeping damsel in distress. Instead— Tamaki makes Kyoya feel at home. He makes Kyoya feel like he has a place to be, a person to go to. Kyoya knows what it’s like to be without a place you feel comfortable, without a place you can be yourself— the entire Ootori estate is like that for him. 

But Tamaki changes that. Tamaki changes everything. He’s not the heart stopping love Kyoya had read about as a child, instead, he’s the gentle, domestic love that Kyoya so desperately and honestly craves. Kyoya has never been a person who needed other people, but by the time that they get to their first year of high school, Kyoya doesn’t know if he was really _awake_ before he had Tamaki.

###### 3: on the two of us, forgetting everyone else

They start the Ouran High School Host Club, because Tamaki has visions and Kyoya makes things happen. It gets off to a rocky start, Tamaki’s dreams not fitting Kyoya’s budget, the twins two feet out of the door, and Honey and Mori not entirely sure what they’re doing there in the first place. But they find a place for themselves in the school eventually. They find a niche that they can fit themselves into, and they stay there, and Tamaki and Kyoya grow an empire. 

It’s an empire of a very specific kind, though. It’s an empire in which he has to let go of Tamaki. Kyoya, the third of three sons, knows what jealousy feels like. He knows what it feels like to freeze with the waiting and the hoping for something that never comes. He knows what it feels like to lose something you never had. 

But he’s never felt it for a person before. Not until he sees Tamaki talking to one of the girls during host club hours. It’s an unfounded jealousy— Kyoya has no claim over Tamaki, and it’s not like this isn’t Tamaki’s job in the first place— but still, it hits Kyoya harder than he thought something like this ever could. He stares at Tamaki, eyes growing hard when he looks at the girl, and his pencil snaps in his hand. 

That’s what breaks him out of it, out of that spell. He liked that pencil. It had been one from his favorite stationary store, and it had cost him too much money to feel okay about snapping it. He takes a deep breath, and looks away from Tamaki. When Tamaki turns away from the girl to shoot him a smile, Kyoya pretends that he doesn’t notice. He can’t bring himself to look. 

He’s not sure why it’s this girl that makes him so irrationally angry, not when there had been plenty of girls before her. They’re in a host club, it’s their job to talk and flirt with pretty girls, it’s their job to make them all feel special. There’s no room there for Kyoya to feel special when Tamaki looks at him, and he knows that. There’s no reason that this girl should be the one to set him off. 

It’s not until he sits at the desk where he’s set up his laptop to look at the guest numbers for the day that he realizes why this girl bothers him so much. She’s become a regular, and unlike the other girls in the club, she’s requested Tamaki every single time. Every visit, she schedules a time slot to talk to Tamaki and listen to his laugh. 

There’s nothing that Kyoya can do about it, and there’s nothing that he plans on doing about it. He’ll sit and he’ll watch from the shadows, and he’ll have to be at peace with that. He runs things from behind the scenes while Tamaki holds the spotlight. If Tamaki is the sun, brilliant and pulling gravity towards him, then Kyoya is the moon, spinning around him. If Tamaki is the moon, then Kyoya is the tide, pulled and pushed as Tamaki pleases. 

Kyoya takes a deep breath, and tries not to think about it. Sitting at his desk in the Music Room 3, he pretends that he can’t see Tamaki as he switches tables. Again, he should have predicted this would happen. The club is in its early stages, so girls were still meeting all of the hosts, getting to know them, trying to figure out which ones they like best. This girl just happened to have gotten it on the first try, and not wanted to meet anyone else. 

Kyoya scrolls through the lists of guests and their requests from the last few weeks— as time went on, the requests grew steadier and steadier as girls found their favorite hosts. Kyoya had been so busy setting up their financial status and making sure all of his guests got registered that he missed this new trend. He missed the fact that more and more girls were steadily requesting Tamaki rather than drifting around. 

On the bright side, that means the club is settling into place. People are finding their favorite hosts, which means that people are returning again and again. It means that the club is making a stand, steeling itself into the halls of Ouran. It means that Tamaki and Kyoya’s dream child had become real; rather than a flimsily structured hour after school, the host club has become a real event. 

He might have to watch Tamaki flirt with all of them, but Kyoya is grateful for those girls. They’re making Tamaki’s visions into a reality in a way that Kyoya can’t do. Kyoya can do as much planning as he wants to, but the girls are the only reason this club exists. 

He tells Tamaki as much, later that day when they’re alone in the music room together. The piano had been pulled out for that day— more for decor than for use— and Tamaki was sitting on the piano bench, lazily tapping at the keys.

“The club is doing well,” Kyoya says, closing his laptop. He wanders through the carefully arranged couches and tables to get to the other side of the room, where Tamaki sits at the piano.

“Good,” Tamaki tells him, grinning. He taps out half of a bar on the piano, the music soft. He has that smile on his face he gets when they’re alone, when there’s no one left for him to entertain— there’s just Kyoya, who has seen his every angle. “We did a good job.” 

Kyoya nods, leaning against the piano. He looks at Tamaki for a long moment, studying the laughter lines at his face, the violet of his eyes in this lighting. He looks in the kind of self-indulgent way that he hasn’t allowed himself to do for fear of Tamaki knowing. But Kyoya is getting the sense that Tamaki wouldn’t understand even if Kyoya told him outright. 

“Some of the girls are choosing favorite hosts,” Kyoya says, dropping his gaze when Tamaki looks up at him. He takes a deep breath. “You know you have a great request rate?” 

Tamaki smirks, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “I can’t say I’m surprised. I mean, look at me.” 

“Whatever,” Kyoya says, rolling his eyes. He pushes his glasses farther up his nose, though they hadn’t fallen at all, and sighs as lightly as he knows. “Don’t get too full of yourself there.” 

“Me?” Tamaki asks with mock hurt. “Too full of myself?” 

That makes Kyoya break, chuckling as Tamaki smiles at him. It’s different from the smile he gives the girls who visit him— there’s something sweeter about this smile, something more childish and innocent. Rather than _charming,_ Tamaki is being honest. Kyoya thinks that maybe this is a Tamaki only he gets to see, and that burning in his stomach returns with a vigor. 

_“Mon chérie,”_ Tamaki says, shifting on the piano bench, “sit with me.” 

Kyoya raises an eyebrow. “Are you about to try to teach me how to play piano? Because I’m vetoing that right now.” 

Tamaki only laughs. “You just look too tense while you stand there. Relax, Kyoya.” 

“I am relaxed,” Kyoya grumbles, but he sits down anyways. 

The piano bench isn’t exactly comfortable with two people sitting on it, and he’s pressed close against Tamaki’s side, close enough that Kyoya can feel his body heat, close enough that Kyoya’s heart is trying to both speed up and settle. There’s a moment where the two of them shift at the same time, and Kyoya’s heart leaps. They sit with their backs straight, as pianists and heirs do, and they both stare at Tamaki’s hands as he begins to play. Kyoya’s heart sinks back into its home. 

He’s not sure what song Tamaki is playing, but he knows that Tamaki is playing it with the kind of emotion that can’t be put into words. At least, not words of any language that Kyoya knows. Neither English nor Japanese have a word for the way that Tamaki’s face softens and the tension around his smile relaxes. There’s no word for the way his hair falls in front of his eyes as he looks down, focused only on the music— 

There’s also no word for the way that Kyoya’s mind drops out of commission for just a moment, for long enough to reach over and brush Tamaki’s hair behind his ear. Long enough for his fingers to brush against Tamaki’s temple and to linger at his shoulder. Then Kyoya finds himself again and drops his hand, his stomach turning over, a sickness choking any words back. 

Kyoya doesn’t look at Tamaki, just stares at the piano keys, waiting for Tamaki to say something. But he doesn’t, he just keeps playing, his hands running over the keys with a practiced smoothness that Kyoya can’t help but admire. He never had much talent with music, but he knows enough to know that Tamaki is a prodigy when it comes to piano. This is a simple song, one that Kyoya’s heard Tamaki play a hundred times before, but it’s still just as beautiful as it was the first time. 

It’s another few minutes before Tamaki stops, the last note trailing off into the silence of the music room. Tamaki looks over at Kyoya, and he smiles, head tilting. “Good?” 

“As always,” is all that Kyoya says. 

_“Merci,”_ Tamaki says, biting his lip. Then he sighs, tapping out another note on the piano, a lonely one. “Hey, Kyoya?” 

Kyoya looks away from the key the fading note had come from and looks over at Tamaki. “Yeah?” 

Tamaki doesn’t say anything for another moment. Instead, he straightens his back up again, putting his hands to the keys, and he begins to play. Once more, everything else fades away as Tamaki plays. Kyoya loses himself into the piano, letting Tamaki’s playing take him somewhere far away. With each moment that they sit there, Tamaki playing piano and Kyoya listening, Kyoya finds just a little bit more of that feeling of home. The music, he thinks, is saying everything. 

“You know that I love you?” Tamaki asks, not taking his eyes off of the piano. He keeps playing, as if he had said nothing at all. “I saw you looking at that girl I was with today.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kyoya says, but he knows that it’s hopeless. 

Tamaki _knows,_ and that means he’s never going to forget it. Tamaki may be dense, and he may be a walking mess, but when he’s trying, he has a perfect memory. It’s why he never has to study for exams in the way that everyone else does, it’s why he holds Kyoya to promises of learning French and has memorized the way that Kyoya goes still when he’s anxious. He _knows,_ and Kyoya is hopeless. But then Tamaki glances at him with cheeks flushing red, and Kyoya dares to hope anyways. 

“Since the beach in Ishigaki,” Tamaki says, breaking a moment between them that Kyoya had thought was going to be final. “That’s how long I’ve been in love with you.” 

“Oh,” Kyoya breathes. 

Tamaki is still playing piano, and Kyoya reaches over to still his hand. Tamaki pauses, watching as Kyoya gently, hesitantly, so painfully slowly, intertwines their fingers. Tamaki inhales and doesn’t exhale. Tamaki’s hand is a fire against Kyoya’s skin, but Kyoya doesn’t ever want to tear himself away. This is a delicate moment, a fragile movement, and Kyoya thinks that he might fall apart at another word. 

But the world spins on despite him, and Kyoya asks, “Why didn’t you say anything?” 

Tamaki squeezes his hand, and Kyoya is grateful for the pressure because he’s pretty sure that this is all some kind of fever dream and he’s going to wake up soon and find out that all of this— the piano, the host club, the music, the love— was a dream. 

“I thought you knew,” Tamaki confesses. He looks at Kyoya, and there’s a peacefulness to his face that Kyoya has never seen.

He’s about to say, “How could I possibly know?” But then he thinks about it. He thinks about the way that Tamaki smiles at him compared to the way he smiles at everyone else. He thinks about how much time Tamaki spends painstakingly teaching him French. He thinks about how Tamaki trusts him with everything. He thinks about how Tamaki means the world to Kyoya, and how maybe it goes the other way around, too. 

“Oh,” Kyoya says. He meets Tamaki’s gaze, taking a deep, shaky breath. “Since the hotel in Okinawa. That’s how long.” 

Tamaki smiles at him again, the movement more familiar than Kyoya’s own smile. He’s memorized all of Tamaki’s smiles, and this is a true, honest one. One that Kyoya has never seen given to anyone else. All of the fear and shame that Kyoya’s ever felt is suddenly disappearing. This, sitting at the piano with Tamaki and whispering, feels right. 

“I know, _mon amour,”_ Tamaki says. He brings Kyoya's hand to his lips, kissing gently. It sends a shiver up Kyoya’s spine.

“What does that—” 

“I’ll tell you later,” Tamaki promises. “Can I kiss you first?” 

There’s no hesitation. There’s no pause. Kyoya just nods his head, and closes his eyes, and Tamaki kisses him. Tamaki kisses him and everything that has ever felt wrong suddenly rights itself. Everything that Kyoya has ever kept hidden in some small box comes out in full color. Tamaki kisses him, and it’s the truest thing Kyoya has ever known. There are no words spoken, no words needed. 

Kyoya has always been the person who knows Tamaki best. If Tamaki is the dreamer, then Kyoya is the dream-maker. But when Tamaki kisses him, Kyoya thinks that maybe he is the one dreaming. Maybe he is the one who has been all too silent, because this makes sense in a way that words do not, and he wishes he had done this a thousand conversations ago. Kyoya kisses Tamaki, and he decides that this is a language just for the two of them, and the rest of the world doesn’t get to know what they’re saying. They don’t have to.


End file.
